Jessica Bennett

Over a year after she killed herself, there’s a deal to keep Phoebe Prince's alleged bullies out of prison, bringing closure to a case that made international headlines. But for the town that was the center of the tragedy--and the six teens who were charged--moving on may not be easy.

The Pacific Northwest: the most tragically idealistic place on earth, where everything must have a greater good, even if it makes your life hell. It’s with a bit of that mentality—and a lot of love—that Fred Armisen (of "SNL") and Carrie Brownstein (of now-defunct Portland rock band Sleater-Kinney) introduce America to the absurdity of Portland, Ore.

If your main source of knowledge about women came from reality TV, this is how you’d see the world: a place where your mom is a conniving, deceitful gold digger, your sisters and girlfriends vicious and catty.

The recent suicides of Tyler Clementi, Phoebe Prince, and others have sparked mass outrage against the kids believed to have bullied them "to death." But our response may be more harmful than the crime.

It’s a proclamation to launch a thousand feminist manifestoes: sexism is dead. So you can imagine the ire that was unleashed when Christina Hoff Sommers’s name appeared this morning, in bold black and white, on the top of the New York Times op-ed page. Fair pay? Sommers asks, referring to a long-stalled bill that would help eradicate wage disparities. Who needs it?

Opponents of Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana, argue that it would create a world where lackadaisical employees would show up to work with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. But at the heart of the debate is not the morals of pot use, or even the technical issues related to consumption on the job, but the matter of cold, hard cash.

It’s no secret we are a society consumed by scandal—from politicians to sports stars to radio hosts, an entire breed of pseudojournalism has erupted from this national pastime. But what is it about scandal that so titillates those of us who can’t look away?

Ninety years ago today, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting women the right to vote. It was revolutionary for the time. But if our grandmothers were born into a world where they weren’t allowed to have a political voice, what will the world look like for today’s young women?

Economists have long recognized what's been dubbed the “beauty premium”—the idea that pretty people, whatever their aspirations, tend to do better in most aspects of their lives. But however hard men have it at work, women will always face a double bind.

Opponent purists may see Oakland's latest move as one more notch on the slippery slope, but it’s no big surprise that local politicians took the city's pot policy one step further this week—approving large-scale industrial farming. Advocates believe the industry could net the cash-strapped city a whopping $38 million each year.

In 2010, when Heidi Montag’s bloated lips plaster every magazine in town, when little girls lust after an airbrushed, unattainable body ideal, there’s a growing bundle of research to show that our bias against the unattractive is more pervasive than ever. And when it comes to the workplace, it’s looks, not merit, that all too often rule.

When historians write about the great recession of 2007–08, they may very well have a new name for it: the Mancession. It’s a term already being bandied about in the popular media as business writers chronicle the sad tales of the main victims of the recession: men.